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Hello out there,
since I work a lot with different resolutions (due to different monitors and xvnc logins) I would like to suggest to make the config files as far as needed resolution aware. This means e.g. plasma could store one config file per resolution with different plasmiods, sizes, position etc. Also different fonts, window decorations, panel configs, input configs etc could be handled and loaded on login.

Plasma is not dependent upon the screen resolution as far as I am aware, since it uses QGraphicsView. All applications that use QWidget cannot be resolution independent because of its implicit design.

Not sure how handling the configuration of multiple resolutions would be handled though.

Maybe I explained it wrong. Let me show you an example:
I have a Notebook with 1280x800 internal screen. If I am at my desk I use an external monitor with 1680x1050. As yone can easily see the configuration of kde (positions, sizes, etc) do greatly differ between these two screens. At the moment everytime I login to my account without the big screen I have to rearrange everything later and vice versa.
The situation gets even more complicated if I additionally login via xvnc with my netbook which runs at 1024x600.
So I mean it would be nice if kde would maintain one (screen related) config set for 1680x1050, one for 1280x800 and one for 1024x600 and switch those on login according to the available screen resolution.

There is another idea to deal with the same problem but without needing the user to do anything:
[Plasma/Activities] Plasmoids scale with screen size/

TheBlackCat wrote:There is another idea to deal with the same problem but without needing the user to do anything:
[Plasma/Activities] Plasmoids scale with screen size/

Yeah looks like pointing to the same direction but does not include font sizes, window decorations etc
I mean of what use is the best scaling if the font is so big you can have only one word on the screen

I will check out activites, but I think it is not really what I have in mind

UPDATE:
Checked out this activity thing but it doesn't work like my suggestion would.

I think this a great idea, but wouldn't it also depend on changes to Xorg?

Angel Blue01 wrote:I think this a great idea, but wouldn't it also depend on changes to Xorg?

I don't think so. I do not suggest live switching. I think the order of processing could be as follows:

KDM login -> program checks resolution -> if available appropriate config-file-set is used otherwise a standard fallback is activated -> everything fine

My first idea was just to link in the appropriate config files. Lets say I have a config set for 800x600 and one for 1024x768.
if I am on 800x600 screen after login a program gets resolution info from X as 800x600 and links e.g. plasmarc-800x600 -> plasmarc and proceeds then with standard startup procedure.
On 1024x768 the plasmarc is linked to plasmarc-1024x768.
For unknown resolutions the first start standard could be used (empty config).

Plasma is resolution independent already, and would not need this. I do not actually know many settings ( outside of Font size, etc ) that need to be changed depending on the resolution.

drizzt wrote:Maybe I explained it wrong. Let me show you an example:
I have a Notebook with 1280x800 internal screen. If I am at my desk I use an external monitor with 1680x1050.

I have a similar setup. Does anyone know if plasmoids support relative positioning (at least other than relative to pixel 0,0). For example using negative x-coordinate to represent a position relative to the right-hand side of the screen, same for y-coordinate?

bcooksley wrote:Plasma is resolution independent already, and would not need this. I do not actually know many settings ( outside of Font size, etc ) that need to be changed depending on the resolution.

Ok, if plasma is already resolution independent, how do I tell it to apply different positions/sizes to plasmoids depending on resolution ?

I think there are many settings which changing would make sense:
- which plasmoids to show (sometimes making all plasmoids smaller just don't make sense)
- positions of plasmoids
- sizes of plasmoids
- font sizes and type
- maybe windekoration and colorscheme
- composition on/off (especially on remote screens)
- effects (especially on remote screens)
- soundeffects (especially on remote screens)
etc

You can't apply different positions / sizes depending on resolution. The entire desktop is adjusted Automatically.

The number of settings you suggest would likely be better resolved with seperate $KDEHOME directories.

bcooksley wrote:You can't apply different positions / sizes depending on resolution. The entire desktop is adjusted Automatically.

The number of settings you suggest would likely be better resolved with seperate $KDEHOME directories.

Ok, if plasma should do that than I urgently need to file a bug report because it doesn't at all. My desktop is an entire mess everytime I switch resolutions and even more if I mix widescreen and not widescreen.

Wouldn't different $KDEHOME dirs lead to lots of duplicate data ?
e.g. nepomuk data, kopete history etc.

I don't know if it adjusts the size, but its design is supposed to be resolution independent. It would be a very good idea to implement though.

Yes, different $KDEHOME dirs would lead to duplicate data. You could symlink the applications that only needed one configuration though.

This method for doing this is explained here:

http://en.opensuse.org/Multiple_Displays_Using_XRandR

My Fedora11 instalation doesn't have the Xorg.conf file mentioned, you would have to create it with a text editor.

No this doesn't what I want.
I want the whole desktop configuration to be resolution dependant. I also think XRandR would be rather useless on VNC remote connections.